You could say that SunTrust dodged a bullet. The Georgia bank was itself an amalgam of smaller banks cobbled together during the deregulation of the 1980’s. On the one side were the Florida subsidiaries based in Orlando, what came to be known as the Sun Bank. On the other was the Trust Company of Georgia, both coming together in 1985 [...]
Goldman Sachs did not disappoint. The bank’s earnings for Q1 were a disaster slightly worse than what was already anticipated as beyond bad. There was nothing that the firm did that it can say it did well, as Goldman’s CEO admitted there was weakness or “headwinds across virtually every one of our businesses.” For eurodollar or wholesale banks, that has [...]
I was rather content to let the matter lie after devoting a couple of lengthy expositions to it, but the Fed has its own way of confirming every charge. I am writing again about the fact that the assumed monetary agency was quite curious about the dramatic changes in banking and money at one point in the not-so-distant past only [...]
Goldman Sachs reported weak earnings today, following Bank of America Merrill Lynch yesterday. The core problem at each is their dealer businesses, though it is difficult to get at that central function in the lumpy, conglomerated mess that passes for (incomplete) financial statements. Goldman’s FICC “revenue” dropped by almost a third in the second quarter from a Q2 2014 that [...]
The FOMC has been talking, so we hear, about changing “forward guidance” to indicate a potential rate hike sooner rather than later. They had already changed the basis of “forward guidance” back in September which largely negated what forward guidance actually meant. The concept is only pliable in the manner in which monetary theory has to follow “rational expectations.” Whenever [...]
The purpose of this exercise of examination of global funding mechanisms is to put together means for inference about the state of dollar funding as it relates to the systemic short (Part 1 here; Part 2 here). There is no direct path for observation; that is why nobody can figure out how big it is or how it has really [...]
The first part of this examination can be found here. At first, the rebound off the 2009 low looked as if there would be no lasting changes or damage to the eurodollar system, but subsequent events have shown that there is more than a little lingering dysfunction that does not sway or erase with central bank assurances (both psychological and [...]
I get so caught up in the minutiae of esoteric function or financial plumbing that it is worthwhile to take a step or two backward and review the financial system from a bit more afar. The repo market’s strain recently and even the idea of liquidity itself are actually features (or symptoms) of the “dollar.” The idea of “money supply” [...]
It seems as if there is a little more complexity taking place in mortgage finance, and therefore the housing “market”, as the simplified idea of rates running the show isn’t holding water. On the surface, the general theme is one that contours to the outline of conventional mortgage interest as it ran through last year’s selloff. It stands to reason [...]
If you haven’t discerned to this point, funding markets are incredibly complex and intricately linked across innumerable network nodes that make precise estimations, even analysis, equally difficult and complex. The primary nodule as it relates to global finance is geographically centered in London, as the eurodollar market largely operates there. With the “US dollar” as the reserve currency (I use [...]
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